Since then, the international human rights lawyer, 39, and Oscar-winning actor-director-producer, 55, have been busy balancing their work around the world with quality time together at their homes in L.A., Italy and England.

“Between all their important work, they always stay focused on keeping their marriage happy and healthy,” a source told PEOPLE last year. “They are very keen on not spending too much time apart.”

George has said that meeting Amal totally altered the course of his life.

“All I know is that it sort of changed everything in terms of what I thought my future – my future personal future – was going to be,” he told PEOPLE of marriage in 2015. “I’ve always been an optimist about the world. I wasn’t always completely optimistic about how it was going to work out personally for me. But now I am.”

And he has long expressed a never-say-never attitude about becoming a dad. “I think it’s the most responsible thing you can do, to have kids. It’s not something to be taken lightly,” he told PEOPLE in 2006, when he was named Sexiest Man Alive for the second time. “I don’t have that gene that people have to replicate. But everything in my life has changed over time.”

Months before the baby news, Amal opened up about her bond with her own mother, Baria, a journalist, calling her one of the most influential people in her life.

“I think growing up my mother was definitely a role model, she was always a working woman and someone who is independent and cared about her career and cared about being independent, but also had balance,” she said during a Q&A at the Texas Conference for Women, where she was the keynote speaker in November.

“She never lost her femininity and she believed the balance was important and that is something that stuck with me.”